Things Must be Thought Through

I was reading some passages by Chuang Tzu, a third century (BC) Taoist philosopher, last night. Chuang Tzu left behind something like Confucius’ Analects, thus a collection of his own and his disciples’ writings. And, like the Analects, much of its content deals with governance—a preoccupation that Confucius impressed upon philosophical thought. Tzu was born about eighty years after Confucius died. The Tao Te Ching, the defining book of Taoism, has a very different flavor. Now here, in The Chuang Tzu, we encounter Taoist thought but applied to governance. While the Tao speaks to me, Tzu’s writings produce a kind of reluctant wonder. Tzu’s fairly consistent solutions to most problem of governance are a kind of do-nothing detachment, which might sound philosophical but would be disastrous in practice. When the kids are tearing up the living room, detached not-doing is not the right response. I fell asleep last night thinking that—and woke up this morning thinking, “Things must be thought through.” That slogan at first lacked all context, but the reference then came to me as I was brewing coffee. Eight hours of sleep later, my last thought of the night had been followed by this one.

In real life we often face this sort of situation. China’s is a distant culture I’ve not experienced directly; I’ve read some of its great classic works—and continue to re-read them. Impressions form—but not based on deep scholarship. One forms opinions nonetheless, but in what I’m about to say, I remind myself that it’s just a reaction…and from a pretty dark shade of general ignorance.

The impression I have is that Confucius had so tremendous an influence on Chinese philosophical culture that casting things in a Confucian pattern tempted all those who followed him. How else to get noticed? Hence we have Chuang Tzu writing in the anecdotal manner of the Analects about the ruler of this, the ruler of that. But my reaction to Tzu’s writings is not-quite-agreement. And here is why, I think. There is a difference in level between Confucian ethics and Taoist mysticism. Each is correct and appropriate within its own range—indeed admirably so—but Taoism applied to governance would be as discordant as the application of ethics to the highest levels of the spiritual life. This is merely to say that a single inspiration guides both, that Confucian and Taoist doctrines don’t really clash—as supposedly they did and do—provided that we think it through. When we do we realize that both arise from the same inspiration, one applied to the personal, the other to the social.

Which brings to mind a saying—from Japan I think. People are Shintoist in youth, Confucian in maturity, and Buddhist in old age. Right on…